Rather than increasing the benefit... it's more the harsh penalty (ie: cost to repair and replace the armor) that hampers FF... ie: a better idea is really to relax the penalty of FF rather than increasing the effectiveness of FF in combat terms.

note: that reducing it's penalty is technically increasing the benefit of FF, HOWEVER it does not alter FF combat performance at all, ie: the benefit it gives to FF is OUTSIDE the combat.

on a fast mech? they usually don't have much of an armor to speak off so their benefit AND penalty are quite limited...

on a slow mech? which presumably are heavily armored, they have the most benefit AND penalty... because as the slowest and most heavily armored mech they also tend to be the one that get shot a lot.

regardless of what mech we use, we can't really avoid getting the armor shot to hell except by not engaging ... with FF armor costing as it is, it's VERY difficult to justify taking such a hit to operational maintenance cost.

The crit space penalty is extensive enough as it is... slap the enormous massive price tag jump on it and you really have to ask yourself, 'is this REALLY actually worth the Cbills you are going to end up spending to maintain it?'

Seriously, FF armor is basically equivalent to painting your mech with GOLD PAINT... each shot, each SCRATCH your mech gets causes Cbills to disappear from your wallet while you use it.

I have to agree with you concerning the operation cost of the FF, it could be reduced by almost 50% this way your armor bill is 150% instead of 199%(why is it 199% not 200%...??? don't know!! should be a good question on those ask a dev. day)

Since armor get scratch on every game (I'm a poor driver I hit trees yet they make no sound and bounce back) the price at 150% should balance out with double repair bill of XL engine which you don't loss every game.

I am shocked at the high percentage of people who failed to learn basic math as children and I want to thank Discordantone for laying it out so clearly. I had already spreadsheeted out the gains losses from each after equipping my first Catapult with FF and realizing that it it is a suckers bet and came to the same conclusion. I just hope this saves someone else the 800-900k I spent equipping and removing FF.

ES let me add a Beagle, an ammo slot, and a heat sink. FF just raised my repair bills to the point that it negated the small gain in defensive capability from getting the mech to max armour.

Are you serious? 12% extra is 12% extra. The more armour a mech has, the greater the amount of armour this bonus would grant.
And the larger the mech, the greater the amount of armour they generally have.

Your tone is not appreciated. Your claims that X is worthless, and that there is no reason to use Y on Z, because you say so, without anything to back it up is just rude and pointless.

Are you serious? 12% extra is 12% extra. The more armour a mech has, the greater the amount of armour this bonus would grant.
And the larger the mech, the greater the amount of armour they generally have.

Your tone is not appreciated. Your claims that X is worthless, and that there is no reason to use Y on Z, because you say so, without anything to back it up is just rude and pointless.

exactly, it does not give you more armor point. Those remain the same. So if you get 84 points for your center torso with standard armor, you only still get 84 points with FF. It is only reducing the weight of you the armor that you are using freeing up tonage and using critical spots to equip it.

THIS. That is where the tooltip and other stuff is deceptive. Most people think it means your armor now does 12% more than it did before applying it. It doesn't. It saves you a piddly bit of weight, how much? Barely half a ton for most players. Is that worth half a million CB -and- losing 14 critical slots? God no, not in a pink fit. Not even if you're DESPERATE for weight loss; just ditch something else, a heat sink and grab the 9x9 cool shot.

There are a few mechs around that actually can gain more armor by taking ferro-fibrous, but only on top of Endo. That is not to say the ferro itself actually provides more armor, but rather the armor that is provided weighs less, and if the slots are there, results in the mech being able to equip more armor up to its max.

(EXE certain SDRs, specific BJ builds, etc.)

Regardless, Ferro is overall a pretty ****** option and only has a place when endo has already been taken, and you also have room for 14 crits and either the additional armor you would get, or can strip small amounts of armor to make a free 1T and jam in another ton of ammo or whatnot.

I use it regularly, but I don't go out of my way to fit it. It is an upgrade of convenience.

i run FF only on my X-5 (it comes stock with endo and FF) and if you want to go fast (which means XL340) with 4ML and 2x Streaks you need every little piece that helps. in fact, there're free crit slots even with both upgrades.

beyond cicada weight i think it's difficult to find a good use for it. below, it's almost always useful.

OP is not claiming FF is useless. OP is explaining that if you only have crit slots for 1, then no matter what ES > FF. FF is only useful in builds with 14+ additional crit slots to play with after it is fully set up.

FF would make much more sense it if was a 25-50% weight reduction rather then 12%. At that point it would lower your weight by more then Endo Steel if you are fully armored but less then Endo Steel if you are running armor-light. Alternatively if it just used 7 crit slots rather then 14.

I just pulled out my old BT Compendium (copy right 1994 )the rules for cunstuction says that for every ton of armor you get: 16 points for standered
18 (17.92) for ff is
19 (19.2) for ff c
and the number of points in each location can not be more than twice the amount of the internal structure with the torso front and back not equalling more than twice the torso internal structure.
The point of ff is not to lower your armor weight. It's to give you more armor points for the same weight. If your going for wieght saving for better equipment than you will always go with the endo steel. However if your trying to go for armor than going for ff will always be your better bet because of the multiply faction. Lets take the original expample.
the commando has 6.5 tons of armor thats : standered 104 points
FF IS 116.48 (116)
FF Clan 124.8 (125)

The Atlas has 20 tons of armor that's: Standared 320 points
FF IS 358.4 (358)
FF Clan 384
Now remeber this is the old BT board game system. However it comes back down to the fact that ff is not a weight saving system but a way to get more bang for your buck.

Sometimes i try to squeeze everything out of a mech and see where it goes.
Squeeze Std Engine -> http://mwo.smurfy-ne...19c54d243eeb2a1
which you can run alternatively with 4 tons of ammo and 2 Med pulse instead , but it is too slow for my taste

typically though the arms rarely survive long enough to warrant more than 3-4 tons of ammo since like all centurions, the gun arm is a shell magnet and is one of the first thing typically to be shot and blown off, you can try your best to shield the gun arm but it'll go off no matter what eventually... it just attracts too much attention.

I really don't like XL engine though for centurions, all centurion variants have great zombie mech potential... and it's being wasted when you stick an XL engine to it, though granted that YLW loses the most on firepower potential as it gradually loses it's parts.

Sometimes i try to squeeze everything out of a mech and see where it goes.
Squeeze Std Engine -> http://mwo.smurfy-ne...19c54d243eeb2a1
which you can run alternatively with 4 tons of ammo and 2 Med pulse instead , but it is too slow for my taste